The Topers

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Junkies, Fundies, Drunks and Broders.

They just can’t stop themselves.

Jokeline via The Swamp.

Rove

Posted by Joe Klein

"Well, this is a surprise. I thought Karl would be there to turn out the lights and write naughty graffiti on the walls to greet the new administration in 2009.

"Some hints about why Rove is actually leaving can be found in this excellent piece in The Atlantic by Josh Green, in which it is argued that Rove's real agenda--as the man himself told Nick Lemann in the New Yorker many years ago--was to make the GOP the dominant U.S. party."

So far, OK.

…
"But there was a fundamental incoherence to the strategy: to build a realigned Republican majority, Bush-Rove (or, perhaps, Bushrove) had to reach out to moderates, but his electoral strategy was to build and win from a (fairly nutball) base on the right."

Yes, and…

"And the few attempts Bushrove made to build a larger coalition--immigration policy, for example--were shot down by GOP extremists.

"My guess is that Josh Bolten, the pragmatic chief of staff, greased the skids for Rove to leave--that the mere presence of Rove stood in the way of trying to build a new, better relationship with Congress for the last 18 months of this dread regime."

Uh…huh…

Finally, Rove is right about 2008, if not about his reflexive demonization of Hillary Clinton: this may not be a Democratic walkover. Indeed, the surest way to make it a close election is to ape Rove.

And here it comes…

…
You can't run from the base and then try to govern from the center. You can't govern from the base and succeed. This is not a plea for half-a-loaf moderation: on some issues, like universal health insurance, corporate (especially oil company) tax breaks and a tax system that treats wealth far more leniently than work, there are real distinctions that should be made.

So, warning against some incipient, invisible, Democratic extremism and base-pandering, Jokeline concedes that the entire Democratic domestic agenda is now so mainstream that it can be waived off as “Well, of course…”

“Don’t run with that soup!” Jokeline shrieks. “You’ll spill it!”

But there isn’t any soup.

And we’re not running.

“Yeah, well, as may be. But if there was soup, and if you were running, then I’d be right!”

“But there's a smart bipartisan national security policy to be promoted, now that Bush's pre-emption has been proved a failure.”

And there we have it.

Every pillar of Modern Conservative Dogma now lies in ashes, and everything the Dirty Fucking Hippies warned would happen has now come to pass with a bloody vengeance.

And Jokeline’s advise?

To warn “Smart Democrats” against catering to some non-existent fringe group with some undefined-yet-leftwardly-reckless course in foreign policy that no one is taking.

"The Center" as a robust, respectful round-table at which compromised can be honorably reached -- "The Center", which Jokeline claims to love above all else -- is now a dead zone precisely because greasy Quislings like Jokeline abetted a cabal of truly loathsome, truly unhinged, truly un-American monsters in destroying it by adamantly refusing to ever call them out by their true name.

All of which he did...in the name of Centrism.

Like virtually every addict I’ve ever encountered, the press shows signs of having reached that point in their free fall where they fucking well know exactly how their drug of choice is killing them.

And killing us.

But because creatures like Jokeline have absolutely no other shtick left to sell, they keeps stabbing the same filthy needle into the same rotting vein and chasing over and over again their ancient, glorious high of being considered Serious Journalists, instead of the pathetic caricatures they have become.

And yet even when their track marks are as clear and stark as the scars on an albino mole rat that’s been clubbed with a hot waffle iron…

Even at that last moment when what is left of part of their mind is still sharp enough to see what a bent wasteland they have made of the rest of their mind…

They nonetheless float above their body like a Predator drone, piloted by their addiction, observing themselves as they carefully pick up, open, prepare and consume the spike/bottle/scripture/dogma which, on some level, they know full-well is the very thing that is hollowing them out and destroying everything they claim to care about.

It is a sad fate for anyone to suffer, but when your entire press corps is caught in the riptide of a junkie-death-spiral, it is a tragedy on a scale so massive that it is sometimes hard to comprehend.